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29 October 2009

The Fan Club

There has always been this bizarro cult of personality thing to Danny Williams’ supporters.

They worship him as if he was a celebrity.

Some out here in the rest of the world – your humble e-scribbler included – have taken to calling the truly hard core cultists The Fan Club. They make comments all over the Internet faithfully pushing whatever line is currently on the go from the Club directors or simply attacking anything that they think undermines the gloriousness of their idol.

They’ve got a language of their own, too, but that’s another story.

Six years in, though, the Fan Club doesn’t have quite the same impact as it once did.

Take the past 24 hours with two examples.

Not so very long ago, the sort of attack on supposed foreign demonios being launched by Hisself and the Fan Club against Hydro-Quebec (again) would be spreading like wildfire. For examples of the Fan Club talking points, just check the comments sections at the Telegram, CBC or even here at Bond Papers.

Not so this time.

This is all old hat around these parts and ordinary taxpayers seem to be having a really hard time connecting a theoretical issue in far off New Brunswick to real-world issues in this province and in their lives.

People have built up an immunity to the same old, same old.

Now that’s really interesting because the immunity is really at the heart of the results in the Straits by-election. Hisself framed the whole thing around the same old, same old: look at all the riches I brought you. $137 million. Show me how much you appreciate that by voting for me.

Well, they didn’t.

A couple of thousand people didn’t and likely lots more didn’t who just never bothered to show up at the polls. A monumental effort worthy of the most grandiose display of the faltering Smallwood empire failed to motivate enough to win the seat as it has every time since 2001 in the Straits and on the overwhelming majority of other similar cases across the province ever since 2001.

That’s not good.

Nor is it good that the Hydro-Quebec attack – another same old, same old – ain’t working either.

That is intended for two purposes:

First, it lets Hisself vent his frustration that the Lower Churchill just isn’t happening.

Second – and perhaps most importantly - it is supposed to help change the channel and get people’s mind off the disaster in the Straits.

But it isn’t doing that second thing. The ordinary taxpayers seem to have caught on.

Meanwhile, there is another problem for the Fan Club beyond the fact their usual stuff just doesn’t work any more.

As he left, Trevor Taylor provided his membership in the Fan Club by praising Hisself to the highest heights on every level. Hisself returned the favour in his comments about Trevor.

Until the loss in the Straits.

Now party insiders are spinning the story to local media – see David Cochrane’s report on Wednesday’s Here and Now, for example – that the whole loss was Trevor’s fault.

That sort of stuff just isn’t going to sit well with a whole bunch of people who haven’t joined the Fan Club but who like the stuff Hisself puts out. They’ve been buying his CDs for a few years now just like they’ve bought The Other Blue Note CDs before.

But maybe not so much any more.

Not, that is, if people like Trevor are getting blamed for stuff they really didn’t do.

Fan Club takes on a whole new meaning when it’s the fans getting clubbed.

8 comments:

Hey - don't anyone look at this loss, you know - the Trevor Taylor loss, instead look at how good I am to fight with, insult and criticize Shawn Graham and Jean Charest. You know, the people with whom I was trying to my own secret deal...

In one fell swoop, NB gets rid of 40% of the public debt, gets lower residential rates for five years at least, increases its competitiveness through lower commerical rates and loses exactly nothing in the process.

Well, nothing except 40% of its public debt.

The same regulator exists and can thereby preotect the public interest without sucking the public dry.

You have to wonder about politicians who have no regard for how much the public of a jurisdiction must shell out in debt servicing costs.

On the subject of fans, it's no suprise to see Ed, Liberal Meaker, spoon in mouth SnOttawa, labradbore and so on taking their usual spot agin Newfoundland and cheerleading the latest crap from Hydro-Quebec.

After all, that's what Liberals do. Screw us. Smallwood, Ed's buddy in privatization Clyde "Lied" Wells, and now another Liberal liar in New Brunswick. Such is this crowd.

From now on you and your fellow travellers in the Fan Club can congregate somewhere else.

In future, anyone wishing to comment here will have to stand behind their own words.

That leaves cowards like you to find other venues. I am sure you will find your old haunts still available. Evidently as things get testier in the local political world some people can't act like adults.

The risk of legal action posed as a result of your irresponsible comments just makes it to much of risk for me to take any longer.

It's too bad that you have decided to cut-off anonymous comments like 18:47. I found those types of comments interesting from a number of perspectives: tremendously amusing in terms of the breadth and depth of ignorance that they displayed; a very good guage of the accuracy of your commentary; and also very revealing in terms of the lack of substance in these types of responses.

Some of the best laughs I have enjoyed is at the expense of the outraged anonymous commentators.

EddieI see you and the Auditor General of NB have a different view of how the proposed $4.5B affects NB Provincial debt. But you know more about everything than everyone so I won't read any more drivel from this NB Auditor G fellow..... Steve Marshall